Steingaden Abbey

The abbey's prestigious building projects, combined with its inaccessible location, brought it into financial difficulties which remained insuperable to the end of its existence.

The monastic buildings were bought at auction by the Meyer brothers from Aarau, who demolished them in 1819, except for the wing containing the Romanesque cloisters.

The former abbey church, the Welfenmünster (Guelph Minster), dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, is a Romanesque building of the 1170s under an extravagant Rococo refurbishment carried out by Johann Georg Bergmüller throughout the whole of the 1740s.

The church retained however a carved sandstone panel of the Welf arms, dating from about 1193[1] which may well have formed part of the destroyed tomb.

In the late Gothic vestibule with its net vaults, a remnant of a Renaissance painting has been preserved in the form of the “Guelph Genealogy”, which was uncovered in 1951 on the north wall.